The Sometimes Writer
How Much Writing Does It Take to Earn the Title?
Today I address a fallacy of what it means to be a thing. What thing? Any thing. The fallacy is that you must actively do something a certain amount or in a certain way in order to maintain your identity as a person who is a do-er of that particular thing.
I’m thinking of this because I was at a party the other day and a friend asked me, “How are your writing projects going?” I have actually been asked this by a few friends lately at a few different parties. I am particularly fortunate to have friends who ask me questions like this; they know and remember what kind of things I’m into and they care about me enough to ask. In this respect, I am blessed. However, there are times when I have to answer, as I did the other day, “Uhhhhhhh they’re not, really.” Then I acknowledged that I don’t have any motivation or discipline during the dog days because it’s hot and I’m tired. She agreed that she also has no motivation lately. To reiterate: I am blessed in the friends department.
Speaking of blessings, or the opposite of blessings, I am cursed to know that “the dog days” refers to the time of year when Sirius, the dog star, rises, which happens to be a hot time of year in the Northern Hemisphere. For most of my life I thought “the dog days” referred to the hottest part of summer when everybody feels like lying sprawled on a cool tile floor, panting, with their tongue hanging out, like a dog does when it is hot. As I have been cursed with this knowledge so too, now, are you (if you were not already).
Anyway, enough about lying around on the cool tile floor with no motivation to do anything. Tell me if any of these sound familiar:
If you’re a real writer, then you write every day.
If you want to be a real writer, then you must write every day.
Writers are people who write every day.
Writers are people who love to write, and so write all the time; at every available moment.
This is true for some writers: Some writers love to write. Not all writers must love to write. Consider: I am an editor. It is my job and I do it for a living and editing pays the bills. That does not mean that I must love editing. It does not mean that I edit every single day. Sometimes I go days at a time without editing everything. Sometimes my job is just . . . spreadsheets. Spreadsheets as far as the eye can see. Sometimes my job is managing people who do editing. Sometimes my job is preparing a budget or a request for proposal. Sometimes there’s no editing at all on my docket.
But I’m still an editor. What does it mean to me to be an editor? First, it refers to a job at which I am employed. Second, it refers to a skill I have. I don’t cease to be an editor if I don’t do it for a day or a week or a month. I am still employed at the job. I still have the skill.
I’m also a sewist—as a hobby. I make my own clothes—I make some of my own clothes—using patterns designed by others, fabric woven by others, and a sewing machine inherited from my partner’s late mother. I do not sew clothing for a living; I earn no money in exchange for the things I sew. Frankly, I don’t save any money by sewing, either. I don’t think I’ve ever made anything I couldn’t have purchased more cheaply. I make a handful garments a year for myself and others. I do not do it every day.
Sometimes after ripping out the same seam three times or completely ruining something by cutting the pieces out wrong, I hate sewing. I don’t love it even a little bit. I despise it. Sometimes mid-garment I get so tired of it that I put all the materials for that garment in a plastic grocery bag and tie the handles in a knot and toss it down the stairs to the basement. Sometimes I never come back to that garment.
But I’m still a sewist. I don’t stop being a sewist when I have no projects for a while. I don’t stop being a sewist when I’m frustrated with the project I’m working on.
I’m in favor of bold statements, but sometimes I see people make bold statements that speak for others and gatekeep experiences, for instance: “Every writer’s book is their baby.”
Well, what if you’ve written a book and it is not your baby? What if you are a ghostwriter and you have written a book that a paying client will put their name on and sell as their own? Are you not, then, a writer? What if you feel no affection for your manuscript? What if it’s just the output of a creative process, to you, and not an object of devotion or emotional investment? Does that mean you did something wrong?
Or: “Writers are people who are compelled to write, who do it because they have to.” What if that’s not you? What if you write out of habit? Or because you have a story you want to tell although you don’t particularly enjoy, or feel compelled to perform, the writing process? What if writing is your occupation and it pays the bills but does not particularly tug your heartstrings? What does that make you, then?
Being a writer can mean:
Writing is a skill you have, at any level of proficiency.
Writing is your principal occupation.
Writing is an occupation of yours, but not your principal (or only) one.
Writing is a hobby you practice, with any cadence or frequency.
Writing is an activity that you enjoy sometimes, or always, or never.
Being a writer does not have to mean:
You earn money from writing.
You write every day.
You write because you feel a compulsion to do so; because you must.
You love writing and prefer it to any other activity.
I’m pretty diligent about writing Shelf Life. Actually, strike the prior statement. I’m astonishingly diligent about writing Shelf Life. I have written more than 300 Shelf Lifes in a row without missing one. You could say I’m shelf stable.
However, when I think about or talk about my writing projects I usually am thinking of fiction; the small handful of novels and novellas I have written, am writing, or want to write; the memoir I’d like to bang out at some point; and the short stories that are a bit like the lawn, it seems like every time I mow one down more come back worse than ever, especially this time of year, what with all the rain and sun.
But anyway, I don’t always work on that stuff. Sometimes I put it all aside and take a break and don’t work on fiction writing or CNF (creative nonfiction, eg, memoir writing) at all. Sometimes for months. Then when my thoughtful friends ask me what I’m writing right now I have to be all “well I’m thinking about writing again in the future but, really, nothing right now.” That always causes me a feeling of fraudulence: This is the impostor syndrome talking! Here are some ways I remind myself I am a writer even when I have not written anything worth mentioning in many moons:
I have a lot of stories in mind I want to tell.
My writing skills are sharper all the time, so when I resume the new work will be better than the old.
Which, like, thank goodness, because some of the old work is quite bad.
I don’t always enjoy writing but I always enjoy having written.
I write sometimes; a lot of people write never.
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